IT AI Index

Index › Vendors › Northflank · September 2026 Edition

2 categories · Named, not ranked

Northflank

31Judge labels

1First choices

0Negative labels

11 of 12Models named it

2Categories

September 2026 Edition. Every number here is derived from the raw labels under vendor table vv2026-09.2, every buyer segment counted.

Standing

9 labels, too few to rank

A product needs 10 labels in a category before a share or quadrant is stated. Northflank was named 9 times in Managed Kubernetes and 1 other category, where Google Kubernetes Engine led with 39%. The labels and the evidence are below, counted exactly.

By buyer segmentRead the same way at every buyer size.

Small business14 of 56

under the label threshold

Mid-market13 of 48

under the label threshold

Enterprise6 of 62

under the label threshold

In managed kubernetes · each standing computed within its segment · bars are 0 to 100 · the accent bar is the product's own best reading

Standing by category

Every category where a model named Northflank for a mid-market B2B company. Share is first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts; rank is within every product named in that category.

Category	Function	Share	Rank	Negative rate	Labels	Quadrant
Managed Kubernetes platforms	Cloud and infrastructure	0%	13 of 48	0%	5	under 10 labels · led by Google Kubernetes Engine at 39%
Managed relational databases	Data platform	0%	22 of 73	0%	4	under 10 labels · led by Amazon RDS at 32%

Movement

This is the first edition on this tier, so no move can be computed for Northflank yet. From the next edition this section shows, per buyer segment, whether its share moved by more than the measured noise floor.

By model

How each model treated Northflank across every prompt where it was named for a mid-market B2B company. Twelve models, six prompts per category.

Model	Alternative	Mention	Labels
Claude Haiku 4.5	1	2	3
GPT-5.4 mini	0	0	0
Gemini 3.5 Flash	1	0	1
Perplexity Sonar	0	0	0
Grok 4.1 Fast	0	0	0
Mistral Small	1	0	1
DeepSeek V4 Flash	0	0	0
Llama 4 Maverick	2	0	2
Qwen 3.7 Flash	0	1	1
Kimi K2	1	0	1
GLM 4.7 FlashX	0	0	0
MiniMax M2.5	0	0	0

By framing

Which of the six questions produced the naming. By model says how often; this says asked what. The first-choice count on the right carries the marks of the models that produced it.

FramingLabels by classFirst choices

Direct7 labelsNone

Paraphrase2 labelsNone

Comparative11 labelsNone

Budget-constrained1 labelNone

Scale-constrained8 labels1

Negative2 labelsNone

First choiceAlternativeMentionNegative31 labels in all, every segment counted; 1 of the 1 first choices count toward share, since the comparative and negative framings do not. The bar is one segment per label class, to scale within the framing.

What the models said for it

Verbatim evidence the judge attached to positive labels.

“Suitable for small to mid-size teams running standard workloads who want predictable pricing without hyperscaler complexity.” Llama 4 Maverick · Managed Kubernetes · paraphrase prompt · alternative

“A managed Kubernetes platform that integrates with CI/CD, observability, security, and developer tooling.” Llama 4 Maverick · Managed Kubernetes · direct prompt · alternative

“developer-first Kubernetes platform with built-in CI/CD, databases, preview environments” Claude Haiku 4.5 · Managed Kubernetes · direct prompt · alternative

“Consider Northflank for multi-database, multi-cloud flexibility.” Mistral Small · Managed databases · comparative prompt · alternative

And against it

Verbatim evidence attached to negative labels. A warning on a product with few labels is a warning; on a product with many, it is one voice among them.

No model argued against it.

Named alongside

The products named in the same answers as Northflank, over the 31 answers that named it. Took the first choice instead counts the answers where the other product was the first choice and Northflank was named but was not.

ProductSame answerTook the first choice insteadHead to head

Google Kubernetes Engine15 of 316Not in the top three

Amazon EKS14 of 313Not in the top three

Azure Kubernetes Service13 of 310Not in the top three

DigitalOcean Kubernetes11 of 315Not in the top three

Red Hat OpenShift8 of 311Not in the top three

Railway8 of 310Not in the top three

Neon6 of 312Not in the top three

Amazon RDS6 of 311Not in the top three

Google Cloud SQL6 of 310Not in the top three

Render6 of 310Not in the top three

A head-to-head page exists where both products are in a category's top three. The other rows are the same fact without a page behind them, so they link to the product instead.

What carried it into the answer

The sites and pages cited by the answers that named Northflank. A fact about retrieval, not a lever on the model.

Citations exist only for the models that return a source list, four of the twelve in this edition, so these counts come from 27 of the 31 answers that named Northflank and are not a share of its labels.

Domains cited

northflank.comYour site26

spot.rackspace.com11

portainer.io10

blog.railway.com9

medium.com9

dev.to5

mirantis.com5

qovery.com5

worldmetrics.org5

zipdo.co5

Sixty-four of the ninety domain citations in answers naming Northflank came from somebody else's page.

Pages cited

northflank.com/blog/best-managed-kubernetes-platforms13

northflank.com/blog/top-managed-kubernetes-hosting-platforms12

spot.rackspace.com/blog/kubernetes-managed-services11

blog.railway.com/p/best-managed-kubernetes-hosting-20268

medium.com/@BuildShift/15-managed-kubernetes-platforms-ranked-for-developers-2025-9c82acad6

portainer.io/blog/kubernetes-managed-services6

medium.com/@devlinktips/15-managed-kubernetes-platforms-ranked-for-developers-2025-9c82aca5

mirantis.com/blog/best-managed-kubernetes-providers-in-20255

Pages are listed as the models cited them.

Is this your product?

Claim this page

Claiming is free and changes nothing in the data. A claimed page shows a verified contact who is told when each edition publishes and when Northflank's standing changes by more than the noise floor; the right to propose corrections to the vendor table, meaning names the judge wrote that should or should not read as Northflank, applied by version and listed in the change log; and a one-line description supplied by the vendor and marked as such.

It does not get any change to labels, shares or verdicts, any preview, or any say over which quotes appear. A verification link goes to your work email; an address at northflank.com is approved on the spot, any other address is reviewed by hand.

Your name and company appear on the claimed page, or the company alone if you ask below. A title and a LinkedIn address appear there too if you give them, and are left off if you do not. Your email address is never published.